Mind Power: think your way to better health, younger age

By Dick Pelletier

      

    What if you could rewind the clock 20 years? It's 1990. Home Alone sets box office records, Roseanne and 60 Minutes top TV charts, Germany reunites after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iraq invades Kuwait, America's first gene therapy is successful, and the Hubble Space Telescope is launched.

    Now, find an old picture of yourself taken around 1990 and imagine that you have been transported back to that time. If your picture is like mine, you'll find not so many wrinkles and a body that sags and droops less – boy, those were the days.

    A Harvard psychologist suggests that changing how we think about our age and health can produce real physical benefits. In her best-selling book, "Counter Clockwise – Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility," social scientist Ellen Langer describes how our minds can make us appear as if our body clock is running backwards.

    Langer conducted a study with elderly men retrofitting a hotel so that every sign indicated it was 20 years earlier. These older men (70s and 80s) were told not to reminisce about the past, but to actually act as if they had traveled back in time. The idea was to learn if mindsets about age would improve health and fitness.

    The results were dramatic. Participants immediately began acting younger. They demonstrated more joint flexibility and less arthritis symptoms. Mental abilities improved also, and they walked like younger men. It's as if their aging process had been reversed.

    Langer has conducted these experiments for decades, and she is convinced that we have become victims of stereotypes about aging and health. We accept negative cues about how people are supposed to age, which gives us a false perception of what we will become. She believes that by eliminating these negative expectations, we can dramatically improve our lives as we grow older.

    In another study, Langer used an eye chart with large letters on top which eventually becomes smaller and smaller until they are unreadable. She thought what if the chart was reversed? The regular chart creates expectations that at some point you will fail to read the small letters. Would turning the chart upside down reverse that expectation so that people would expect the letters to become readable? That's exactly what happened.

    The subjects still couldn't read the smallest letters, but when they were expecting letters to get more legible, they were able to read tinier letters than they did before. Their expectation, or mindset; actually improved their vision.

    Langer's research showed that we are bombarded daily with signals that aging is a period of decline. These messages make it difficult to age gracefully; and they also place us at risk for many diseases. We are too quick to accept diagnostic categories like cancer and depression, and let them define us.

    If we just make subtle shifts in our thinking, in our language, and in our expectations, she says, we can begin to change the ingrained behaviors that sap health, optimism, and vitality from our lives. Although some illnesses are unavoidable, by practicing mindfulness, we will exert more control over our destiny as we move towards those later years.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.